


he lived a good life, and he gave it to you

by greenivy



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Blood and Injury, Fae & Fairies, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Minor Character Death, Miya Osamu-centric, Original Characters are Villains - Freeform, Panic Attacks, based on deliveryservice's summer dance!, kind of pre-sunaosa, volleyball as a coping mechanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29952189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenivy/pseuds/greenivy
Summary: Osamu has escaped from the fae, but the memory of the Prince's attempt at a grin before he died at Osamu's hand haunts him like a particularly stubborn ghost. Atsumu finally has his brother back, but he can't stand the way Osamu stares blankly into space when he thinks no one is looking. Suna is just glad that the twins are back from wherever they disappeared to, and yet he can't shake the feeling that something is still terribly, terribly wrong. What exactly happened to the Miya twins during their sudden disappearance during the summer break?-It isn’t the image of the moment the Prince died that makes him freeze this time, not like the first time he met Suna’s eyes. Here, the Prince is standing right next to his best friend with that familiar deranged grin on his lips, neck torn open and bleeding. The Prince smiles knowingly, winking. Suna, therealSuna, slowly raises his hand and waves tentatively. Osamu can’t bring himself to wave back, eyes still stuck on the spectre that follows him even after death.-A sequel of sorts to deliveryservice's amazing fic, summer dance!
Relationships: Miya Atsumu & Miya Osamu, Miya Atsumu & Miya Osamu & Suna Rintarou, Miya Osamu/Suna Rintarou
Comments: 8
Kudos: 17





	he lived a good life, and he gave it to you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deliveryservice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliveryservice/gifts).
  * Inspired by [summer dance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26888029) by [deliveryservice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliveryservice/pseuds/deliveryservice). 



> Hey all! It's me, ya boi, back with another fic! I can't thank deliveryservice enough for letting me write a sequel of sorts to her amazing fic, summer dance! I had a great time writing this, and I hope you enjoy it!

Atsumu doesn’t know what happened to his brother after he was transported back to the human world. He remembers asking his brother why he drank the wine, the exhausted look in Osamu’s eyes as he’d replied,

_“I was thirsty.” The dark circles under Osamu’s eyes only added to the guilt that had been twisting in his gut as he’d finally taken in the sight of his twin in front of him for the first time in- well, he doesn’t know how long they’d been apart, but it had hurt like hell to see his brother at the end of his rope because of_ Atsumu _. And then the first thing Osamu asks after probably going through hell and back is,_

_“You’re okay?” Atsumu almost starts crying anew. Isn’t he supposed to be the one taking care of Osamu as the eldest? When did his younger brother mature so much, when it feels like just yesterday he was getting into a fistfight over the last pudding cup? Osamu says he isn’t giving up, is going to fight for his own freedom, but that Atsumu can’t just leave their mother alone, and that’s just playing dirty. And then:_

_“Well, this is touching.” The Prince appears, and something ugly raises its head in his stomach as Atsumu takes in the way the fae royalty looks at his brother._ You don’t deserve him _, Atsumu wants to snap,_ you’ve done nothing but play with him like he’s a puppet. Don’t you _dare_ touch him.

_Atsumu is forced to watch as his brother snaps at the Prince, clearly at a disadvantage- the fae prince isn’t the one whose brother is on the line._

_“ **‘** Tsumu,” Osamu says, “I told ya ta go. Listen ta me.” Atsumu wants to grab his brother and never let go, wants to tell his brother that there’s no way he’s going to leave without Osamu. Osamu pushes him back, toward the Prince. Before the fae, it felt like Atsumu had been the stronger one, causing Osamu to have a harder time trying to manhandle him, but now, just a gentle push sends Atsumu off balance and back onto the floor. _

_“Oi, ‘Samu, I don’t know what yer up to, but I already told ya I ain’t goin’ anywhere without ya!” Atsumu pleads, reaching a hand out to his brother, something in him cracking when Osamu doesn’t take it and instead turns back to the Prince._

_“Can you send him back?” Osamu asks, and it’s the most determined face Atsumu has seen his brother make in a long time. His fists are clenched and there’s tension coiled in every muscle of his body as he addresses the fae._

_“I can,” the Prince nods. Atsumu feels panic bubbling up in his chest._ No, no, no, no, no. Osamu is supposed to leave _with_ him, he isn’t supposed to stay behind and practically let the fae eat him alive.

_“Then do it.”_

_Atsumu lunges forward, trying to grab his brother’s hand. Osamu looks at Atsumu, stares him straight in the eye as the Prince begins to chant some sort of mumbo jumbo magic shit to tear Atsumu and Osamu apart, and Atsumu can feel a yell on his lips as his fingers almost,_ almost, _brush Osamu’s._

_Atsumu is gone before he can even attempt to say goodbye._

_When he makes it back to the house, he still has no idea what to say to his mother._ Their _mother. Except Atsumu is here and Osamu isn’t, stuck in the realm of the Prince, who looks at him like he’s a meal made specifically for the fae royal in more ways than one. Their mother gasps when she sees him, in the same clothes he’d been wearing when he’d entered the fae’s world and filled with guilt. He’s tight in her arms before he can blink, and when she looks up at him and says,_

_“Atsumu, where’s your brother?” with heartbreak cracking her voice and red-rimmed eyes like she hasn’t stopped crying since they’d disappeared, all Atsumu can do is finally succumb to the wave of guilt hurt sadness anger_ fear _that he’s held inside for so long that he thinks he could explode from it all._

_“I don’t know, okaa-san,” he whispers and buries his face in her shoulder. And it’s true._

A month and a half pass by, and Atsumu is staring down the prospect of going to school without his twin brother for the first time in his life. What is he going to say to their friends? Their coach? Their teachers?

He has no idea how long it’s been for Osamu, stuck in the incomprehensible passage of time that the fae call their own.

Atsumu hasn’t touched his phone since the day he’d pushed his nose too far into things he should’ve stayed out of. Occasionally he’ll see the screen light up with a new message, but what would he even reply with? He’s certain that his and Osamu’s disappearances have made the news- even more sure that his return was somewhere on the headlines.

After all, he was the one who’d had to sit through police questioning him about what had happened and where he’d gone. They hand him the note his brother left behind when Osamu had gone after him, watch as his eyes fill with tears as he reads and rereads the note, despite nothing substantial actually having been written.

_Mom,_

_Gone searching for ‘Tsumu. I’ll try to be back soon. Don’t worry._

_\- Osamu_

_P.S. I’ve left some food in the fridge so you won’t have to cook dinner for a few days._

It’s so short and to the point and _exactly_ like his brother to write something like that and Atsumu realizes he hasn’t heard his brother’s voice in a month and a half. That nearly sends him spiralling again, and it doesn’t take much longer for the police to conclude that Atsumu doesn’t know anything that would be helpful. What would he even say?

_“Sorry, but I wanted to go to the realm of the fae for shits and giggles, got myself stuck there, then Osamu followed me to get me out, and got stuck himself?”_

There’s absolutely no way that anyone would believe him.

So now he’s stuck here, staring at the walls of his house, _their_ house, wondering _if he hadn’t been so_ stupid _, Osamu would be here right now, wouldn’t he?_

He gets his act together two weeks before school starts. _Osamu wouldn’t want you to throw away your future after he sacrificed himself for you,_ a voice inside his head hisses, sounding rational and exactly like his brother.

So he starts training again, throwing himself into workouts and conditioning and _volleyball_. He tries to ignore the chilling silence that hangs over their room as he tries to rest at night, no creaking of wood coming from the bottom bunk, no occasional snores that Osamu insists don’t exist. No one slaps him upside the head to wake him in the morning or asks him to play _Winning Eleven_ as an apology after a fight. The house is too quiet, so Atsumu fills it with obnoxious music, singing along terribly to the lyrics, and shuffling to the beat.

He fills his head with strategies and combinations and tactics for volleyball, working on his serves until his palms are numb and his wrists are sore. There’s no one to kick him and call him a dumbass for overworking himself.

Sometimes he snaps at his mother when she tells him she’s worried and tracks her down later to help her with dinner or pastries, huffing a quiet, _“Sorry, okaa-san,”_ when he’s sure she isn’t looking at him. She forgives him every time, and Atsumu kind of wants her to scream at him that he’d doomed his twin to a kind of eternity that anyone could describe as hell. Some small part of him tells him, _She’s already lost one son, she can’t afford to lose another._

It’s the day before school starts up again and Atsumu is paralyzed, staring blankly at the sky in the park. He’s in a corner that no one ever visits, probably because there isn’t any grass, just dandelions forcing themselves up towards the sun in the middle of a desert of cracked dirt. The very thing he’s feared for nearly two months is right in front of him, taunting him silently.

He’s going to have to go to school and no one will mistake him for his brother, no one will call him _Osamu_ by accident, he’s going to have to stand in front of their volleyball team, in front of Aran, Kita-san, _Suna,_ and tell them that he doesn’t know what happened to his baby brother. Three measly minutes have started to matter entirely too much to Atsumu over the summer.

He walks back to the house slowly, dragging his feet in a way Osamu absolutely _despised._

_“Yer takin’ too fuckin’ long, ‘Tsumu. I wanna go home an’ eat.”_

He holds back a sigh. He thinks that if he gets to see his brother just one more time, he’ll never drag his feet on his way home again.

And then- and then-

Atsumu steps in the doorway, raising his left leg to shake off his shoe, he looks up, and freezes. Standing there in front of him is his twin, the other half of the infamous ‘Miya Twins’ volleyball duo, his _baby brother_.

“ **‘** Samu?” He whispers, like if he speaks any louder Osamu will break into a million little pieces in front of his eyes and blow away.

“ **‘** Tsumu,” Osamu says, and before he can even attempt to finish his sentence, Atsumu has barreled into him, shoes still on his feet and probably giving Osamu a mouthful of his hair. Atsumu couldn’t care less; his brother is in his arms, _he’s home he’s home he’s home._

“I can’t breathe,” Osamu wheezes, and Atsumu reluctantly lets him go, barely taking a step back like he’ll disappear if Atsumu blinks. He looks over his brother, trying to spot any injuries. He can’t see any, but after meeting the Prince, Atsumu understands very well that that doesn’t mean there aren’t any, whether physical _or_ psychological. Atsumu would burn the world for his brother right now.

“How are ya here?” Atsumu asks, almost reverently. His voice is quiet, a rarity in and of itself.

“Magic?” Osamu replies- though it sounds more like a question than an answer. Atsumu punches Osamu’s arm and recoils immediately. Osamu’s skin is as hard as steel.

“How’s yer hand?”

“What the _fuck_ happened to ya there?” Atsumu spits, absolutely ready to jump back into the fae realm to snap the Prince’s neck. Osamu grimaces, and Atsumu’s thoughts immediately turn down a dark path.

“Tell ya later,” Osamu says, and this is normally where Atsumu pushes further than he should, but for now, he just narrows his eyes at the neutral expression that has taken over Osamu’s face.

“Alrigh’,” Atsumu says, accent getting thicker with the emotions in his voice, “but ya have ta tell me wha’ happened a’ some poin’.” He leaves no room for protest in his tone.

“For now,” Osamu says, “I think I just wanna cook some onigiri and sleep away the rest of my summer.” Atsumu’s face splits into a grin.

“Bad news,” he starts, and cackles at the expression of foreboding on his brother’s face, “school’s tomorrow.”

“...Fuck.”

“Fuck’s a way ta put it.”

Atsumu refuses to go far from Osamu. He allows himself to orbit around his twin, and sometimes he can’t worry from his gaze. Osamu could dissolve into smoke at any point and Atsumu wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he lost his brother after he’s just gotten him back. Osamu just nudges their shoulders together and cooks extra food for them.

Atsumu thinks that this is definitely Osamu’s way of saying he’s with Atsumu and doesn’t plan on leaving any time soon.

-

Miya Osamu can no longer look Suna Rintarou in the eye. When he catches a glimpse of the younger boy, dark hair and strange, captivating eyes, all he can see is the huge grin on the face of the Prince, still trying to cackle as he breathes his last. He can still feel the crimson of the Prince’s blood sticky on his fingers, the sweat that had soaked his body as his chest heaved, trying not to hyperventilate.

Suna Rintarou has become synonymous with the Prince, dead as a doornail and yet still just as deadly as he was while he was alive. Only now, his weapon is Osamu’s memory.

When he catches his first glance of Suna on the first day back of school, he nearly passes out, paralyzed before the face of a dead man.

No, the Prince is not dead. He lives on in Osamu’s memories, in his nightmares as he laughs and laughs and laughs, neck twisting around as blood pours from the wound Osamu made with his own two hands. Is this what people feel like when they look at Atsumu and Osamu? Sickened and horrified, terrified out of their minds as they take in these strange sort of predators that share a face? He knows it isn’t logical, but he was essentially held hostage by the fae until he managed to dig himself out of it, and no one on the earth will believe it but his brother. What do you say to a boy who shares a face with a man you killed?

He has to stop himself from entering the gym, and Atsumu opens his mouth to complain before he catches the way Osamu’s face has washed out with white.

“ **‘** Samu, this has to do with the Prince somehow, right?” He whispers, his hands fidgeting like he doesn’t know whether to reach out or keep his fingers to himself, and it’s so unlike Atsumu, who throws himself headlong into things recklessly, that Osamu starts to think he’s in a fever dream, still back in the realm of the fae.

Osamu shakes his head, not to try to tell his brother _no_ , but to try to dispel the cackling laugh of the Prince. There’s one difference between Suna and the Prince that Osamu _has_ to hold onto if he wants to stay afloat right now, and it’s that goddamned _smile_. The Prince grinned like it was his goal in life to split open his cheeks and let his blood pour out onto the ground just to see what would happen. Suna has a resting neutral expression, and any changes tend to result in a frown.

It would sound completely insane and selfish if he were to say it out loud, but Osamu is willing to do almost anything to keep a smile off of Suna’s face.

He remembers the Prince’s face twisted in displeasure, the tone of his voice as he gave Osamu a quest, a subtle chuckle that never really left his lips, just colouring all of his words with the same kind of music Osamu never wants to hear again.

He realizes that he’s practically hyperventilating outside of a gym that he plays volleyball in, in the human world, with his brother at his side and not locked away somewhere Osamu can’t find him. Osamu doesn’t need to watch what he drinks or who he speaks to and how, and he doesn’t need to look for hidden meanings behind every damned word that’s spoken.

A piece of Osamu has been left in the realm of a man who is dead, where nothing is as it seems and everything is somehow nothing and everything that you’d expect. And it _hurts_ to have a problem meeting Suna Rintarou’s eyes. It hurts to hear his brother’s voice fade in and out as he crouches on the ground, hands grinding into his ears as though he can block out the sound of the Prince’s voice lingering in his head on loop.

“ **‘** Samu?” Osamu might be the little brother, but that doesn’t mean he’s okay with hearing the _fear_ in Atsumu’s voice as he asks his brother to come back to him from wherever he’s gone. And it’s the fact that Atsumu sounds like he’s willing to go back into the realm of the fae solely to throw hands at somebody because of Osamu that Osamu snaps out of it. He isn’t going to let Atsumu go anywhere near the fae ever again if he can help it.

“ **‘** S’okay, ‘Tsumu,” he says shakily, “ **‘** M back, ‘s’okay now.” Atsumu doesn’t look like he believes him, but he drops it for now. Osamu knows he’s going to get grilled the minute they’re alone.

“If anyone says anythin’, ‘m gonna grind their bones inta dust,” Atsumu growls, punching one fist into an open palm. Osamu laughs weakly, punching his brother lightly on his shoulder. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen his brother happier that Osamu’s hit him. Osamu takes in a deep breath and exhales slowly, pushing himself off of the ground and starts walking towards the gym.

He’s going to make it through practice if it’s the last thing he does.

-

Making it through practice might turn out to be the last thing he does.

It isn’t like he’d expected everyone to ignore the fact that Atsumu had gone missing, and Osamu had followed soon after; before Atsumu returned and his brother didn’t- but he hadn’t expected this much of a deal to be made out of it.

“The hell happened to you two?” Gin asks, his ‘worried mother’ expression making another appearance.

“Fuck off Gin,” Atsumu says, throwing his hands up in the air like he’s heard this question a million times by now. He probably has, since he’d essentially swapped places with his brother and waited for him to come home. There are bags under his eyes that are only partially covered by concealer like he’d been too tired to even do that. Osamu is hit with the fact that he missed _two months_ of his twin brother’s life. The largest period they spent apart previously had been the All-Japan Youth camp.

“Don’t bother them, everyone. Practice starts in a minute,” Kita-san’s calm voice cuts through the haze, and as much as Guide had been comforting, Kita-san is like an anchor, unshakeable in the face of torrents of ocean water pushing from all sides. Osamu has never been more grateful to hear that voice come out of the right mouth.

Osamu makes sure that he doesn’t touch anyone accidentally. His skin is as hard as steel now, and that isn’t exactly easy to try and explain away. It has the unfortunate side effect of everyone staring at him like his sudden aversion to any kind of touch is just another piece in the puzzle that is, _what happened to the Miya twins this summer?_

He’s never been a particularly touchy-feely person but being one half of a matched set smashes boundaries faster than you can put them up. He doesn’t actively seek out touch, but it’s an unconscious habit to sling an arm around someone and lean into their touches in return. He’s never been shy of getting into close contact with someone he knows and trusts.

So now, his purposeful avoidance of brushing up against one of his teammates when before he wouldn’t have batted an eye is something they notice, and _quickly_. Osamu wants to feel the invisibility he’s used to as Atsumu’s brother. Now the spotlight is trained on him, and he hates the heat of the light on the back of his neck, causing sweat to soak his collar, the way the brightness is shone directly into his eyes, forming spots across his vision. He feels blind and _helpless._

They line up for a spiking drill after warmups, bumping the ball to Atsumu who sets for them. Osamu is in the middle of the line, and he can feel the weight of many sets of eyes on the back of his head, waiting, watching. It reminds him too much of the Fae court. One slip-up could mean the end for Miya Osamu, _wave goodbye to your last chance of seeing your brother again, little human._ He mentally shakes it off. Any movement right now will feed the fires of suspicion and hasn’t Osamu learned how to hold his mask up to his face without needing his hands to keep it there?

Gin spikes the ball solidly, the familiar _bang_ of a volleyball against the court floor like music to his ears. Kurosu tosses him a ball, and his body is already moving to get under it, arms flat as he shifts to put it right to his brother at the net. The receive is clean, and Osamu can see the familiar grin on Atsumu’s face as the thrill of the game takes over his brother once again. Osamu takes a familiar three steps, arms sweeping behind him and then up and backwards once more, every fibre in his being going, _ah, there’s that feeling again. You can belong here._

He jumps, and Atsumu sets the ball perfectly as he always has. Osamu’s right arm swings forward and his palm hits the middle of the ball, sending it flying to the ground on the opposite side of the net. The ball hits the wall on the rebound, and it slows to a stop just before the attack line on the other side. Osamu has never hit the ball that hard in his life- has never had the kind of power that it requires to push the ball that far. He’s an excellent spiker, and he knows it, but he’s not close to the kind of explosive strength that Aran has.

There’s silence in the gym for a moment and Osamu hates the tension in the air with every inch of his body.

“Well, why couldn’ ya do that last year, huh? Coulda won us a tourney, ‘Samu!” Atsumu scoffs, and Osamu can’t help but snort at that.

“I wasn’ liftin’ yer heavy ass in weights last year, ‘Tsumu. There’s no way I coulda hit this hard,” he retorts, and just like that, the spell is lifted. Atsumu squawks at him indignantly, pressing a hand to his chest in a dramatic fashion.

“I ain’ that heavy! Ya take that back! ‘Sides, I weight about jus’ as much as ya do!” Atsumu shrieks, stomping towards Osamu with his hands in fists at his sides. Aran practically _appears_ at Atsumu’s side, holding him by the back of his practice shirt.

“Can we wait until the end of practice to start a fight? It hasn’t even been twenty minutes,” Aran sighs, holding Atsumu in place like it’s nothing.

The rest of the day runs much smoother after that. The team has upgraded from walking on shards of broken glass to eggshells, and although Osamu would much rather that things would just go back to normal, he feels that this is going to be the best he’s going to get for a while.

After school causes both relief and dread in equal measure. He won’t have to face his teammates anymore, but Atsumu will want to _talk_. He can’t face his brother right now when all he can see is one particular hallucination that made his blood run cold during a drill.

_Suna pauses, retrieving a ball that had rolled to his feet and looking up, coincidentally meeting Osamu’s gaze with his own. He freezes for a second and Osamu feels his stomach drop. It isn’t because he’d hoped just a little that his best friend wouldn’t act just like his other teammates and his brother. No, it’s the image of the Prince standing just behind Suna so Osamu can only see his torso and up._

_It isn’t the image of the moment the Prince died this time, not like the first time he met Suna’s eyes. Here, the Prince is standing right next to his best friend with that familiar deranged grin on his lips, neck torn open and bleeding. There’s blood on the Prince’s shirt, dark wine-coloured blood slowly staining his tunic further as blood gushes from the wound. Osamu thinks he can see just a hint of white bone inside the gore. The Prince smiles knowingly, winking. Suna, the_ real _Suna, slowly raises his hand and waves tentatively. Osamu can’t bring himself to wave back, eyes still stuck on the spectre that follows him even after death._

_The letter the Prince wrote to him burns him, though it’s all the way on the opposite side of the gym in his jacket pocket. He can’t force himself to throw it out, though the thought of looking at it again makes him feel sick. The letter is a relic of a dead man, a trickster, a prince, a usurper, a man who Osamu had murdered with his own two hands._

_There is nothing else to do but move forward, but Osamu thinks that taking the first step away is the hardest one to make._

_Suna lowers his hand, an unreadable expression on his face._

_Osamu is at a loss. Staring right into his best friend’s eyes, it feels like he’s looking at a stranger. That hurts more than anything else._

-

Just as Osamu thought he would, Atsumu corners him right after practice. Unfortunately, they haven’t even passed through the gates to the school, so they’re still on school property for a conversation that Osamu would really rather not have in full view of every single student.

“ **‘** Tsumu-”

“No, we’re havin’ this conversation, ‘Samu! Ya can’t worm yer way outta this one!” Atsumu declares, pointing a finger right at Osamu’s chest.

“Sure, but can we _not_ have it in front of half of the student body?” Osamu sighs, already feeling the fight go out of him.

“Fine!” Atsumu huffs, crossing his arms. He pauses for a moment before starting again.

“Home?” He asks, eyes softening a little. Osamu shakes his head.

“Ma might hear us,” he says, and Atsumu nods before launching into detail about new plays he wants to try next practice, hands waving wildly as he attempts to demonstrate them with only one person. Osamu can’t stop the fondness from welling up in his chest. _He really does have the best brother._

If Atsumu notices the small smile on Osamu’s face as they walk towards the park, he doesn’t say anything, just continues rambling.

By the time they reach the park, it’s abandoned. Osamu shoots their mother a text to let her know where they are- they are _not_ giving their poor mother another heart attack, thank you very much.

Atsumu forgot to tell anyone he was going to the konbini once, and he’d walked back in the door only to immediately be wrapped in two sets of arms midway through calling out,

“I’m home!”

He’d gotten doubly yelled at for that one, but he stopped trying to shout back in his defence when he saw both his mother and his brother’s eyes shiny with unshed tears. Atsumu hasn’t forgotten to text anyone where he was going since.

Osamu, on the other hand, isn’t allowed to leave sticky notes anymore. He’d left one on the counter when he realized he’d left his jacket at the school, and upon finding said note, Atsumu burst into tears that didn’t stop until Osamu was home again, jacket in hand and thoroughly confused.

“Ya- ya can’t _do_ that ta us, ‘Samu,'' Atsumu had sobbed, crushing Osamu in his arms and refusing to let go for a solid ten minutes. Attempts to pry him off resulted in an ear-splitting screech, and so Atsumu was allowed to cling onto his brother like a koala until he could be convinced that Osamu wouldn’t disappear.

They turn to the playground wordlessly, Atsumu taking the sole swing and sticking out his tongue at Osamu. Osamu rolls his eyes and takes a seat on one of the sets of tiny stairs a foot and a half away, staring at the ground.

The only sound for a while is the creaking of the swing.

“I can’t stand silence, ya know,” Atsumu says suddenly, letting his legs swing a little.

“I know that. You’ve been that way for forever,” Osamu replies, raising a brow at his brother’s words.

“Well, yeah, but it used ta be me always havin’ somethin’ ta say. Now it’s ‘cause it’s scary, ‘Samu,” Atsumu says, eyes fixed on something in the distance. They look glazed like he’s seeing something that isn’t there anymore instead of a smattering of trees. Osamu sits up straight, staring at his brother.

“What are ya on about, ‘Tsumu?” He asks, an unpleasant creeping sensation of dread curling in the length of his spine.

“Ya know, they weren’ sure what ta do with me at first, ‘Samu.” Ice lodges itself into Osamu’s throat. If they hurt his brother, if they’ve scarred Atsumu somehow, to hell with leaving the fae kingdom to itself. He’ll burn it to the ground just to give his twin peace of mind.

“When they found me wanderin’ they jus’ put me in a room for a while. They fed me an’ shit, but it was so _quiet_. I dunno how long I was in there for, but no one ever spoke ta me. Ya’d think there would be some birds or insects makin’ a racket, but it was dead silent, ‘Samu. It felt like forever,” Atsumu confesses in a voice so quiet it might as well have been a whisper.

“So now, whenever it gets real quiet, I jus’ gotta speak up, ya know? ‘Cause if I don’t, I’m just sittin’ there in the dark an’ everythin’ stops _existin’_.” Osamu is certain that he’ll see the haunted look in Atsumu’s eyes in his dreams for a very long time. Atsumu stretches his arms out, pointedly avoiding Osamu’s gaze.

“Now I’ve told ya some traumatic shit, so it’s yer turn, baby bro.” Atsumu’s voice gets stronger like he’s trying to sweep things to the side for now.

“How d’ya sleep, ‘Tsumu?” Osamu questions warily, eyeing the bags under his brother’s eyes.

“Most o’ the time, I don’t. Sometimes I’ll turn on the radio so it isn’t so quiet,” Atsumu answers. Osamu pauses before opening his mouth.

“ **‘** Samu, how did ya get out of there?”

It’s the one question he doesn’t think he can answer.

“ **‘** Tsumu, I can’t-” He starts, taking his elbows off of his knees.

“Bull _shit_ you can’t, ‘Samu!” Atsumu explodes, whipping his head around to face him. Osamu raises his hands in front of him defensively, and they both freeze. They get into a lot of fights, but never once in their lives have they been genuinely afraid of one another. Even now, the image of the Prince has overlapped with Atsumu’s. It isn’t his brother he’s staring down right now, but a dead man with a wicked grin.

“ **‘** Samu- I- I didn’t-” Atsumu stammers, looking like something inside him has just broken.

“ **‘** Tsumu,” Osamu interrupts. Atsumu stares at him with something horrified in his eyes.

“ **‘** Tsumu, I knew ya weren’t gonna. I know, ‘kay?” Osamu tries for something soothing. Atsumu doesn’t look like he’s about to bolt, so it must have worked at least a little.

“Look, ‘Tsumu, I- I dunno how ta say this. But how I got out is- it’s the one thing I jus’ _can’t_ tell ya right now, it- ask me anything else, _anything_ ,'' Osamu begs, trying desperately to stay in the present and not get sucked into the past, the heft of the spear’s shaft in his hands and the spearhead homing in on the target. He grips his pants in two tight fists in an attempt to ground himself.

“I… okay, ‘Samu. Okay,” Atsumu trips over his words as they try to come out, the swing no longer swaying gently. He swallows thickly, trying to will away the stinging in his eyes.

“ **‘** M sorry, ‘Samu. Somethin’ else instead.” Osamu manages to keep himself in the _now_ , but he can’t bring himself to look over at his brother.

“Then, what was that in practice today?” _Atsumu doesn’t pull his punches. First, he almost has to spill about how he’s a murderer, and now instead he gets to talk about the man he killed?_

“Y’know how they look alike.” Osamu doesn’t specify who he’s talking about, but Atsumu knows. He nods, and Osamu continues.

“I dunno how long I was there, but I know that probably around sixty percent of that time was with the- _him_. An’ I just- I can’t separate them. I look at Sunarin and I can’t stop seeing _his_ face, an’ he’s always smilin’, ‘Tsumu, d’ya know that? Whenever I see his face in m’ dreams, he’s always smilin’,” Osamu says with a hollow laugh, bringing his face down to meet his knees so Atsumu doesn’t have to see the tears that have started to make their way down his cheeks.

Abruptly, there are arms around him, warm and solid.

“ **‘** S okay, ‘Samu. Ya don’t always gotta be strong,” Atsumu’s own voice is tight like he’s also holding back tears. Osamu looks up, and then he wraps his arms around his brother and they both let the sobbing start.

“Don’ leave me ‘gain, ‘Tsumu,” Osamu manages around the shudders wracking his body. He can feel Atsumu nodding vigorously, sniffling.

“Ya can’t leave me neither, ‘Samu.” Atsumu’s voice is just as bad. They stand there for what feels like an eternity.

When they finally let go, the sky has gotten dark, and Osamu brings out his phone to text their mother that they’re on their way back.

“ **‘** Kay, ‘Tsumu?”

“ **‘** Kay, ‘Samu.”

The sky is streaked with purple, clouds drifting eastward slowly as they make their way back to their house.

Perhaps they’ll tell each other everything someday.

-

It becomes a tradition after that. Once a week, when their afternoon practice is finished, they’ll walk to the park, and find an abandoned part to talk in. Every Friday at the park, Atsumu will ask if Osamu is ready to tell him how he escaped, and every Friday Osamu says no. He’s not sure if he’ll ever be ready, but he thanks whatever deities might be watching over him that Atsumu has finally developed a semblance of patience.

Gin tries to ask them to go to the arcade on one occasion.

“Sorry, Gin, but Osamu an’ I always hang out on Fridays!” Atsumu responds with a grin that gives nothing away on his lips. Gin scrunches up his face in confusion.

“Where the hell do you go? I’ve never seen y’all downtown,” he says, cocking his head to one side.

“Well, we ain’t goin’ downtown.”

“Listen; this Friday, we’re gonna figure out wherever the fuck it is they go every week,” Gin announces. Suna looks up at him with an unreadable expression.

“And you’re asking me… why?” Suna asks, leaning his head back onto the floor.

“Because you’re Osamu’s best friend, aren’t ‘cha?” Gin says, putting his hands on his hips as if to say, _and that’s final!_

“I’m not so sure anymore,” Suna states simply, watching boredly as one eyebrow on Gin’s forehead slowly creeps upwards.

“Dude, he shares food with you.”

“Not anymore.”

“Seriously? I swear I’ve caught him looking at you like, seventeen times a day ever since you came here in first year.” Both eyebrows are about as high as they can go by now, but Suna thinks that Gin’s eyebrows could probably be the first to take flight.

“I’ve talked to him maybe ten times total since school started, and I’m in the same class as him. I sit in front of him.” Suna points out, head lolling to one side as he tracks a bead of sweat as it slowly makes its way down his collarbone.

“No way. He’s a really quiet guy- even last year, and he was practically hangin’ off of you!” Gin exclaims. If there was a desk, Suna is certain he would’ve slammed both hands down on the surface like he’s a lawyer.

“I’m telling you, he’s been avoiding me ever since the end of summer,” Suna says, trying to ignore the pang in his chest as he’s thrown back to several incidences where Osamu would’ve jumped at the opportunity to mock Atsumu with Suna, and instead the wing spiker had kept his mouth shut and his eyes straight forward.

“I’m just worried, y’know? Whatever happened to them while they were missing has got to be pretty bad if they’ve stopped fighting each other all the time. I’m pretty sure they’ve only gotten into one fistfight since school started,” Gin muses, something flickering across his expression before it smoothes itself out again.

“Anyway, I want to make sure they haven’t been brainwashed into becoming drug runners or somethin’,” he explains, getting distracted as the twins come into view in front of the gym.

“That’s pretty fucking stupid, Gin,” Suna says impassively, but he can’t help the way his heart constricts as he watches Osamu toe off his sneakers and flop down to the floor to lace up his volleyball shoes.

-

Practice runs smoothly up until they start the scrimmages.

The beginning is fine, actually, and then Suna takes a ball to the face when he’s blocking, and everything goes downhill from there. Gin, who’d essentially just spiked Suna point-blank in the face, starts screeching about how sorry he is.

“AH, Suna, I’m so sorry, please don’t kill me! I still have to confess to Tamaki-chan! I’m too young to die!” He wails, getting on his knees as Suna glares at him, blood slowly dripping down his chin.

“So, Gin. What goes up first, the video of you singing while you wash the floor, or the picture of you drooling on your pillow with the _worst_ bedhead I’ve ever seen?” Suna asks sweetly, eyes closing as he gives his most terrifying smile. Gin’s grovelling and shouts of apology are expected. What isn’t expected is the choked noise that makes its way out of Osamu’s throat and the way he zeroes in on the blood now smeared on Suna’s face after he attempted to wipe some of it away seconds earlier.

Atsumu grabs his brother’s shoulders and forces Osamu to face him. Osamu is turning incredibly pale, and it looks incredibly out of place when Osamu’s skin is usually sun-kissed and (unfairly, Suna might add) never burns. He’s as white as a sheet now, but no one besides Suna and Atsumu seems to notice, everyone else too busy scrambling around and yelling about tissues.

Suna tries to give Osamu a wry smile, but it drops off of his face when Osamu physically flinches back, replaced by a confused tick of his brow and the creases of his lips pulling with worry.

Atsumu is whispering something, but it doesn’t seem like Osamu can hear him. His eyes are miles away, reliving something Suna can’t fathom, knuckles white from how hard he’s clenching his fists. Suna takes a step forward, but before he can get anywhere, Akagi runs up to him with a wad of tissues.

“I’m fine,” he insists, and Akagi nearly punches him in the nose trying to shove the tissues in his face.

“Take ‘em,” the libero says, his normally cheerful face suddenly looking very threatening, “or I’ll break your kneecap.”

Suna takes the tissues.

By the time his teammates have stopped crowding around him, Osamu looks normal once again, if not a little shaken. Suna can’t help but compare the incident to previous times Suna has had a minor injury on the court.

Osamu was always the first one there, calloused hands taking his own gently while taping his finger, a hand on his cheek while he checked Suna for a concussion, a shoulder bumping his lightly while Osamu’s hands pressed an ice pack to his ankle. He didn’t crowd Suna, but he wasn’t what felt like miles away either, looking like he’d had a bucket of ice water poured over his head.

It’s different, and Suna is certain that he doesn’t like it.

Osamu hasn’t touched him casually ever since the summer, hasn’t touched or even brushed up against anyone besides his brother even on accident. He keeps a small distance from people, subtle enough that it’s easy to miss unless you’re looking for it. But for some reason Suna can’t explain, he’s looking for it- seemingly all the time.

Where Osamu would brush elbows or shoulders with his teammates before, he’s taken a step back, gesturing more with his hands to make up for the lack of contact. He replaces touch with movement, hands demonstrating objects in the air instead of sidling up to Suna and showing him a picture, their heads leaning against each others’.

_What happened to you while you were gone, Osamu?_

-

After practice, Suna has just barely finished cool-downs and stretches when Gin appears at his side.

“We’re going now!” He announces, though his voice is just low enough that only Suna should be able to hear.

“Wait-” Suna starts, shoving his water bottle in his bag. The twins call out their goodbyes from the doorway and disappear from view, the walls of the gym blocking them from sight.

“C’mon, Suna!” Gin drags Suna up by the arm (quite the feat, considering Suna’s sheer muscle mass and unwillingness to be moved) and doesn’t let go as Suna grabs his bag, marching them towards the door.

Suna sighs, relenting. He can’t deny his own curiosity towards anything that involves the Miya twins, especially if said twins disappeared for an entire summer without a trace. Nevermind the fact that they  _ reappeared _ just as quickly as they’d gone, and without an explanation to boot. 

Suna just hopes that the answers they get from following the twins aren't going to give him nightmares that are worse than the ones when they left.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm planning on releasing a part-two to this at some point, including Suna and Gin following the twins, as well as an eventual confrontation between them all, but this is all for now! I do have parts of the second part written out, so at this point, it's just motivation I need... And you know..... comments and kudos are great motivation.... 
> 
> Anyway, I had a great time on this wild ride, and be absolutely sure to check out deliveryservice's summer dance if you haven't already! That's all for now!


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